A veteran of the Lopez insurrection and of the Ten Years' War was José Morales Lemus, who was born at Gibara on May 2, 1808, and became a successful advocate. Convinced of the wrong of slavery, he liberated his own slaves, who however insisted upon voluntarily remaining in his service. He participated in the Lopez invasion in 1851 and in the Pinto conspiracy in 1855, on which account he was exiled to the United States. In 1866 he returned to Cuba and became President of the Junta of Information. At the outbreak of the Ten Years' War he went to New York to become head of the Cuban Junta there, in consequence of which all his property in Cuba was confiscated. At Washington he strove earnestly though in vain to secure the recognition of Cuban belligerence. His efficient patriotic labors were continued in New York to the day of his death, which occurred on June 23, 1870.

One more Cuban writer demands attention, prior to the War of Independence; though there were indeed many others of merit whose names might well be recalled if a bibliography of the island were to be compiled. Rafael Merchan was born in 1844, and was thus a mere youth when the Ten Years' War began to be planned; yet we must reckon him to have been perhaps the foremost patriotic journalist of that struggle. It was he who suggested the name "Laborers" which was at first commonly applied to the Cuban revolutionists. It will be recalled that in Cuba affairs were directed by a "Labor Committee," that in the United States societies of "Cuban Laborers" were formed in many cities, and that periodicals called El Laborante were published. Proscribed and sentenced to death by the Spanish authorities, he found asylum in New York, and there edited the Cuban revolutionary journal, La Revolucion. Thence a few years later he went to Bogota, Colombia, to engage in business and also to continue his literary career. It was his good fortune to be able to resume his patriotic writings in 1890, when the War of Independence began to loom upon the horizon, and to write in 1895 and later several pamphlets in support of that struggle, some of which had much influence in both America and Great Britain. He lived to see the Cuban Republic securely established, and to go abroad as its Minister to France and Spain in 1902. His service was brief, however, because of ill health, which soon brought him home to die.

It would be pleasant, and not lacking in profit, to dwell at greater length upon these and other intellectual leaders of the Cuban people. What we have said is, however, sufficient to show how greatly and how masterfully the intellectual side of Cuban life was developed during the century of political stress and fitful military strife which served as the stormy prelude to Cuba's achievement of her independent rank among the nations of the world. It was a development admirably comparable with any ever recorded of any other people, and one which splendidly vindicated the claim of the Cuban people to worth as a sovereign nation. Moreover, it was an unmistakable earnest of approaching independence. While for a century Cuba was purely a Spanish colony, her intellectual life was embryotic and inert. During the two centuries while she was more or less an object of international contention, she showed little activity. But in her fourth century, the era of revolution and of aspirations for independence, she showed the stuff that was in her sons and daughters. Her soldiers were valiant in battle. Her statesmen were wise in council. Her scholars and literati commanded distinguished attention in the most brilliant intellectual era of human history, and demonstrated that the Cuba that was about to be would be in the culture of the higher life a worthy member of the community of nations.

THE END OF VOLUME THREE

INDEX for Volumes 1 thru 4

The following typographical errors were corrected by the etext transcriber:
whereupon Castanada=>whereupon Castenada
General Caballere de Rodas=>General Caballero de Rodas
He had taken an active part in the revolution upon its inception=>He had taken an active part in the resolution upon its inception
wtih which to support their movement=>with which to support their movement
deserted and, approaching the Spanish=>deserted, and approaching the Spanish
their govermnents and to have interviews=>their governments and to have interviews
Talon was an intense patriot=>Tolon was an intense patriot
quantiy of provisions=>quantity of provisions